Theologia :: Miscellaneous :: “Jesus Is Lord”: A Practical Suggestion for Struggling with Sin
I knew Mark back when he worked at mobap. I worked there also, while I was going to school. This article is very good and dovetails nicely with an article I’m working on regarding faith, and with some posts I’ve made in the past regarding spiritual warfare.
Monthly Archives: November 2006
Hope in Lord of the Rings
From a quote in an article on the Catholic nature of LOTR comes a gem from Tolkien explaining what hope is and succinctly describes the source for a Christians hope. The scene the passage refers to is that of Aragorn’s death, when Arwen calls Aragorn by his true name, Estel.
This scene is illuminated by a remarkable dialogue about death between the High Elf King Finrod and the human woman Andreth. The dialogue goes back to very early times, before the story of Beren and Luthien, the ancient pattern of the story of Aragorn and Arwen. Andreth loves an Elf, Finrod’s brother, who loves her in return. It becomes clear to Andreth that she will grow old and die, while her beloved remains young and free from death. The realization leads her to despair. “‘Have ye then no hope (in the face of death)?’ said Finrod. ‘What is hope?’ Andreth said. ‘An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.’ ‘That is one thing that men call “hope”,’ said Finrod. ‘Amdir we call it. But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust.” It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all his designs the issue must be for His Children’s joy.’”
Emphasis was added by myself.
A Philosophy of Photographic Lighting for the Human Face
I spent a couple days with some friends of mine working on lighting setups for interview situations. My friends are into movie making and anything to do with cameras and lenses is of interest to me. I wanted to take some time to write down some of the things I learned while playing the setups.
The first and most important observation was that the purpose of lighting is to bring out lines and features of a persons face. The key features of the face to look at when balancing the light are the nose, the jaw line, and the line that starts at the cheekbones and falls down to the chin, and also the brow and eye sockets. You want those lines to stand out distinctly. When those features aren’t noticeable, the face tends to look flat and sometimes fat.
To bring out those characteristics, you use shadow and highlight, placing lights at angles that will cast shadow to emphasize to hide features of the face. To do this, you will often use three basic kinds of lights.
The key light is the main light light source and is also used to determine which direction you want the shadows cast and to provide the point of light in the eyes that prevents them from looking dark or empty.
The fill lights only purpose is soften the shadows cast by the key light, and fill lighting can be accomplished more often easily by using a bounce card than another lamp.
The last light is the backlight, which is used to highlight the edges of the hair and shoulders, and sometimes to cast light onto the sides of the face to create a starker line on the cheekbones and temple.
Some other observations had to do with atmosphere. Darker lighting combined with soft lighting adds a feeling of closeness. A brighter more even lighting scheme indicates more distance. The color of light you choose helps convey emotion as well, the warmer tones are more intimate, cooler tones are sharper more technical or business like.
These observations are generalizations of course.
Thoughts, and Miscelleni
I’ll admit, this post is prompted more by the fact that there isn’t much on the front page than my anything else. I feel compelled to explain myself, which isn’t, by necessity, a bad thing.
Past few weeks have been dull. Not in the sense that there hasn’t been things going on, but in the sense that in spite of the things going on, I still feel a bit empty, like I’ve misplaced my ability to focus on my goals and want very much to take a long long vacation. ;)
I got bogged down with a cold a week or so ago, and that has made me want to stay in bed. I’ve not been able to concentrate on much of anything since then. I am feeling better though, and the Thanksgiving holiday is coming up. I took a few days off last week, and I’ll be taking a few days off around thanksgiving, so that should help restore thing a bit I hope.
I’ve been watching for people to describe on the train, but there have been few really unique characters. Or maybe I’ve just become used to them.
I was going to say more, but I think I’ll let it go at this. Look for my article on Faith, which is coming soon, and some posts on photographic lighting.
More t-shirt Goodness
Because its the cool thing to do on the block these days, A List Apart has t-shirts. This post is only here so I don’t forget which ones I like when I start buying t-shirts in 2007 (the official Walljm Year of the T-Shirt).
Pastor Spilger on the Nile, Uganda, Africa
Dr. Guimon on the Nile, Uganda, Africa
Interlude
I’ve not disappeared. Honest. I’ve been engrossed in the idea of Faith, its implication, and its role in Christianity. I’ve been spending a good deal of time thinking about it. It has lead me to some research into Epistemology (fascinating field of philosophy), some research into the Doctrine of Scripture, and some other things. I have the text of my sermon last Wed that I want to publish here, but its not ready. After writing it, I discovered there was a good deal more I wanted to cover. I hope to do that in my sermon today. After that I’ll revise the two texts and publish them here for your review.
In the meantime, I delivered the latest Spiral of my project and it was well received. I’ve still not had much time to photograph stuff, but I will try to post some photos from my camping trip a couple weeks ago.
Cheers!
Faith, Epistimology
Link
Christian Faith differs from belief in that you can believe something true and be wrong. Faith, on the other hand, has to do with knowing (Faith is the Greek word Pistis), and for something to count as knowledge, it must be true. (ref: Epistimology
A Christian has Faith, because he knows the thing he believes in is true. This makes sense when you read scriptures such as 2 Peter 1:16-19 with other passages like Hebrews 11:1M and Romans 10:17
Link
Social scientists adopt one of four main ontological approaches: realism (the idea that facts are out there just waiting to be discovered), empiricism (the idea that we can observe the world and evaluate those observations in relation to facts), positivism (which focuses on the observations themselves, attentive more to claims about facts than to facts themselves), and postmodernism (which holds that facts are fluid and elusive, so that we should focus only on our observational claims). Taken from Ontology – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I find this interesting, mainly because Postmodernism is in direct opposition to the foundation with which Christianity is built, mainly “The Word”. I’ve been listening to a lot of Ravi Zacharias, and also thinking a lot of the concept and role of Faith. I’ve also been taking a class in Doctrines which has been covering the doctrine of Scripture. All these things relate. But the point of interest here is that Christianity relies on “logos”, the word. The evidence given as proof by the Apostles for their assertions was the scriptures, the “more sure word of prophecy” (ref: 2 Pe 1:16-19
Rushing Water, Ha Ha Tonka State Park, MO
I Remember Growing Up
I remember while growing up, a constant in my life
The presence felt of Faith in God, and knowing that it mattered
How you chose to live with Him,